Rob and Mandy met at the tender age of nine, and Mandy fell headlong and irrevocably in love before she could have possibly known any better. A dozen years later Rob caught up with Mandy emotionally and the two were married in a park in May.
Years went by and their plans for spending a year living in Spain never materialized, so Rob convinced Mandy to go back to school. One short year of community college later and Mandy gained acceptance to UC Berkeley, and the two packed up and moved north. Living in Berkeley was both incredible and maddening, and when Mandy graduated with a BA Summa Cum Laude in Comparative Literature, Rob decided that he wanted to move back to southern California and attend CSU Long Beach. Mandy helped with the move down, then flew off to Germany with a dear friend to study German for two months. Living in downtown Long Beach while Rob attended school had it's ups and downs for the mostly happy couple, and in the end, Rob earned his BA in Journalism.
The day after Rob's graduation, the two of them took off on a largely unscripted road trip across the United States (from CA to NY and back again). It was an amazing journey for the couple on many levels, and when they returned, they settled down with the intention, eight years into their marriage, of expanding their family by one. Imagine their shock and surprise when, huddled about the tiny portable sonagram machine in a doctor's office, the nurse/midwife told us there were two tiny fetuses nestled in Mandy's belly.
The twins arrived in April of 2010, 6 weeks early. They spent some time in the NICU gathering up their strength and basking in the care of all those wonderful nurses. Oneta Simone and Robert Graham eventually came home, and Mandy and Rob have never been so sleep deprived or so happy. For now, unable to bear the thought of separation after so long a hospital tenure, Mandy is staying home to care for the twins while Rob works as a manager of a Starbucks in Huntington Beach. Mandy has recently applied to a handful of graduate schools in the hope that at least one will accept, and she can continue working on making her aspirations a reality. In addition to his work, Rob coaches freshman high school soccer and broadcasts as a sports reporter on public television for a local community college where he has been asked to teach next fall if budgets improve. Rob, Mandy and the twins are looking forward to all the exciting things ahead.